Yorkshire Museum gets a makeover

Yorkshire Museum gets a makeover

Happy
Yorkshire Day! In order to celebrate the big event, York's inimitable Yorkshire Museum has reopened after a major refurbishment – much of the work done through DIY projects involving all the museum's staff. Maev Kennedy takes a look at some of its historical treasures

The museum's Roman and Viking collections are back in new displays. Treasures include the marvellous Coppergate Helmet, the best Anglo-Saxon helmet ever found – discovered when a digger blade hit it during the construction of a shopping centre

Objects from the Vale of York hoard, part of the museum's stunning archaeological collections. The museum was founded by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1830, one of the first purpose-built museums in the country. Originally its collection was rich in geology and natural history: in the new displays you can see a seven-metre-long Ichtyosaur fossil found on the Yorkshire coast, the most complete skeleton of a now-extinct New Zealand Moa bird, and even a meteorite that terrified railway workmen who saw it fall to earth on March 14, 1881

A fourth-century head of Constantine. The rebuild of the Ashmolean in Oxford cost £49m and the Herbert in Coventry £20m, but the thrifty Yorkshire Museum managed the job on £2m by calling on the talents of its own staff

A Roman statue of Mars (300-350AD). 'There's nobody in the place, from the shop staff to the chief executive, who hasn't picked up a hammer or at least a brush at some point in the project,' head curator Andrew Morrison said. 'It's been emotionally, mentally and physically exhausting, but we've all come out of it with surprising new skills. I now know I can knock down a wall, rebuild it and then plaster it - who'd have guessed?'